A person skilled in the art generally understands the expression ‘polymer-based floor-maintenance agents’ to mean, as a rule, classical maintenance agents which are capable of being removed by wet-chemical treatment. These removable maintenance agents are susceptible to disinfectants, particularly those based on alkylamines, quaternary ammonium compounds, alcohols, but also others, and no longer meet the more stringent demands of consumers. In particular, stains caused by skin disinfectants and hand disinfectants, as well as white stains caused by alcohol/water and colored stains caused by marker substances as well as instances of yellowing caused by surface disinfectants based, for example, on quaternary ammonium compounds and also on amine-type active substances continue to lead to complaints from the persons responsible for buildings, by reason of the visual impairments. These problems are observed, above all, in hospitals. But they also occur in attenuated form in an environment where use is made of cleaning agents and/or disinfecting agents that contain the indicated components.
By reason of the disadvantages of classical removable maintenance agents, in recent years it has been observed with increasing frequency that polyacrylates coupled to non-metals are being used in coating films, with the consequence that the resulting maintenance films are difficult to remove by wet chemical means or can no longer be removed by such means. “Wet chemical means” refers to a traditional floor stripper designed to remove traditional zinc or metal crosslinked acrylic finishes. Examples of traditional strippers include BLAST, CARESTRIP LO, BENDUROL FORTE, and HAWK from Ecolab Inc., and PROSTRIP by SC Johnson Professional Products. Such a floor stripper when used at the recommended use concentration is capable of removing a traditional zinc crosslinked topcoat but not able to remove a non-traditional crosslinked undercoat. Typically a more aggressive chemistry is needed to remove the cross-linked undercoat. Examples of such films are films that are crosslinked with aziridine and based on polyacrylate. Theoretically, these maintenance films would really never have to be removed if the effective film or films were always to be renewed early enough. But practice has shown that this is not actually put into effect or that the non-removable maintenance film is frequently damaged and thereafter has to be removed mechanically in elaborate manner by erosive means. A further consideration is that in the grinding process the control over the grinding action is also limited, and damage to the covering occurs quite often.